Where were the Slavs during the Roman Empire?

[2.7182818284590...]

I'm beginning to think that the Romans used certain terms
interchangeably to describe the northern and eastern barbarians, to
whom they referred to as "Germania". The land mass of Germania
extended to the far east to the Ural Mountains, from what I
understand. It's very intuitive that Slavic speakers lived here as
well as Baltic speakers. I realize that the Romans didn't care much
for the language of the Goths (who were Germanic), or the Baltic or
Slavic speakers. But I'm convinced that these Baltic and Slavic
peoples were found in beyond the Black Sea area.

Moreover, I would think that the Ostrogoths (i.e. Eastern Goths) may
have had some Slavic/Baltic elements. After all, if Huns from the Far
East (i.e. Central Asia/Kazakhstan) accompanied Germanic tribes, it
should be intuitive that they also picked up some Slavs and Baltic
people.

What references - both tentative or definitive - do Romans make of
Slavic/Baltic speakers?

[C***@gmail.com]

I don't know about Classical references, but I think the Slavic people
are usually thought to have originated in what is today roughly known
as Ukraine.

[VtSkier]

Post by C***@gmail.com
I don't know about Classical references, but I think the Slavic people
are usually thought to have originated in what is today roughly known
as Ukraine.

Which was the center of Ermanerich's empire.

[Johansson Inger E]

Post by VtSkier

Post by C***@gmail.com
I don't know about Classical references, but I think the Slavic people
are usually thought to have originated in what is today roughly known
as Ukraine.

Which was the center of Ermanerich's empire.

The Slaves weren't in that area. Some of the groups were in the Baltic
regions while some of them still were east of the Roman Empire and most were
around and east of today's Moskow. As for Ermaneric, he can be followed from
before he crossed the Baltic Sea on via the Baltic areas and Poland down to
the Black Sea.

Sources to read: Ammianus Marcellinus chapter 29 to 31; Jordanes Getica
118ff (can be confirmed to be correct via the other refs given here as well
as via Cassiodorus Variae); Zosimus chapter 4; Eunapius fragment 39M and
480-481; Orosius 7:33 ff; Chronica Gallica; Olympidorus (especially chapter
7); Prokop has small info given in his book dealing with the Vandalen and
Goth wars; so has Priscus and John of Antyioch. To name a few.

Inger E

[VtSkier]

Post by Johansson Inger E

Post by VtSkier

Post by C***@gmail.com
I don't know about Classical references, but I think the Slavic people
are usually thought to have originated in what is today roughly known
as Ukraine.

Which was the center of Ermanerich's empire.

The Slaves weren't in that area. Some of the groups were in the Baltic
regions while some of them still were east of the Roman Empire and most were
around and east of today's Moskow. As for Ermaneric, he can be followed from
before he crossed the Baltic Sea on via the Baltic areas and Poland down to
the Black Sea.

That is about what I understand about the movements of
Slavic peoples. However, I also understand that Ukraine
was approximately the center of Ermanerich's Empire.
Which ran from the Baltic to the Black.

Post by Johansson Inger E
Sources to read: Ammianus Marcellinus chapter 29 to 31; Jordanes Getica
118ff (can be confirmed to be correct via the other refs given here as well
as via Cassiodorus Variae); Zosimus chapter 4; Eunapius fragment 39M and
480-481; Orosius 7:33 ff; Chronica Gallica; Olympidorus (especially chapter
7); Prokop has small info given in his book dealing with the Vandalen and
Goth wars; so has Priscus and John of Antyioch. To name a few.
Inger E

[Christopher Ingham]

Post by 2.7182818284590...
I'm beginning to think that the Romans used certain terms
interchangeably to describe the northern and eastern barbarians, to
whom they referred to as "Germania".  The land mass of Germania
extended to the far east to the Ural Mountains, from what I
understand.  It's very intuitive that Slavic speakers lived here as
well as Baltic speakers.  I realize that the Romans didn't care much
for the language of the Goths (who were Germanic), or the Baltic or
Slavic speakers.  But I'm convinced that these Baltic and Slavic
peoples were found in beyond the Black Sea area.
Moreover, I would think that the Ostrogoths (i.e. Eastern Goths) may
have had some Slavic/Baltic elements.  After all, if Huns from the Far
East (i.e. Central Asia/Kazakhstan) accompanied Germanic tribes, it
should be intuitive that they also picked up some Slavs and Baltic
people.
What references - both tentative or definitive - do Romans make of
Slavic/Baltic speakers?

Very little can be said about the origins and early history
of the Slavs based on written evidence. The first certain references
to them occur about 550 in Procopius and Jordanes,
who call them_Sclaveni_. Tacitus much earlier referred to a
people to the east of the Germans called the Veneti, and
this name was often used to designate Slavs by their late
antique and early medieval Latin- and German-speaking
neigbors; but while this may indicate ethnic continuity,
there is in fact no proof that the Slavs were descendants of
the earlier Veneti. Archaeological evidence for their
prehistory is problematic, too, as the identification of specifically
Slavic archaeological regions before the sixth
century is purely hypothetical. It is not ascertained what
cultures in the areas northeast of the Carpathian Mountains
were exclusively Slavic, Baltic, Finnic, Dacian, Gothic, or
Sarmatian.

Generally speaking, Baltic- and Slavic-speaking tribes
inhabited much of eastern Europe in the first centuries CE to
the east of the Germanic tribes and north of the Iranians,
including much of present-day Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and
western Russia. (The grouping of Baltic and Slavic into a
single branch of Indo-European is somewhat controversial, but
the exclusively shared features of the languages far outweigh
the divergences.) The Slavic area proper was most likely
relatively small, perhaps concentrated in what is now southern
Poland.

In the early fifth century the Slavs began expanding in all directions
and by the beginning of the next century apparently established a
presence in areas north of the middle and lower Danube. They soon
expanded (initially in confederation with
or as subjects of otherpeoples, such as the Avars, Antae, and
Lombards) into regions of the former Roman Empire that had
been abandoned by German tribes, and into most of the Balkan peninsula
following the abandonment of the provinces there by
the Byzantines.

It is difficult to attempt to reconstruct a model of ethnic formation
of the early Slavs or to even know to what extent
they had any consciousness of communal identity, as they were
a decentralized peoples very different in social organization
from the other two types of groups which came to occupy the
Roman territories, i.e., the Germanic tribes, which had a
warrior-caste system, and the Central Asian steppe peoples,
who tended to aggregate around charismatic leaders.

W. Pohl, in G.W. Bowesock et al., eds.,_Late Antiquity: A
Guide to the Postclassical World_(Cambridge, MA, 1999),
700-2.
J.M.H. Smith,_Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History,
500-1000_(New York, 2005), 23, 30, 37-8.
H. Wolfram,_The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples_
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1997), 302-4.

Christopher Ingham